Edited by Robert H. Zieger

1985; 2001

Editor's Note
 

It is a little-known fact that among Thomas A. Edison's inventions was a primitive sound recorder. A cumbersome, complex contraption, this machine received sound waves from a membrane constructed of buffalo intestines and "imprinted" them through electro-magnetic impulses on a roll of magnesium impregnated fibre spun from cotton produced only in remote valleys of the Lower Nile. Virtually impossible to keep in running order, this "Batik Recorder" was never patented. Apparently, only three working models were ever built.

For years, it was thought that none had survived. However, to the amazement of curators at the Smithsonian Institution, a housecleaning in April, 1980, turned up what appears to be the sole remaining machine. A team of industrial archaeologists and acoustical engineers, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Technology, toiled for four years to refurbish the primitive machine. At first it was thought that the reconditioned apparatus would be merely a museum piece, since the process by which the cotton cloth was prepared for recordings has been lost to history. Scholars searched through Edison's laboratory notes and those of his assistants to attempt to reconstruct the chemical formulae and processing details by which the cloth was made ready to receive the electromagnetic impulses. Imagine their frustration when all they turned up was Edison's cryptic notation for April 8, 1884, reporting only that "Today we prepared the cotton cloth for recording. Keep your fingers crossed."

Imagine, however, their excitement when last summer a janitor at the Smithsonian discovered, lodged behind some loose bricks, a vacuum-sealed container and brought it to the attention of his foreman. This box, when opened, revealed six rolls of wound fabric. Breathlessly, project engineers mounted a roll on the recorder, aligned the complex pulleys and levers, and set the machine in motion. Imagine, too, their exaltation when, faintly but clearly, they heard the voice of Sen. Wilburn Pithright (D, Iowa) declaiming on the intricacies of tariff legislation! This voice from the past is an incredible discovery, one that has set the world of historical scholarship abuzz.

Students of American labor history have particular reason to be grateful to the engineers and archaeologists-and to the alert janitor, Odell Wooley. For among the six rolls is one that contains the reminiscences of the leading labor journalist of the 19th century, James Furlong. Seventy-eight years old at the time of his interview, Furlong was among the first American reporters to cover the 19th century's "labor beat." Following is a brief biographical sketch of Furlong, prepared by Wayne State University Professor of History, Robert H. Zieger,⁽¹⁾ who served as Historical Consultant to the Smithsonian project. After this sketch is a transcript of the interview with Mr. Furlong, conducted in 1885 by Edison's assistant, Mary Lewis Boyd.
 

Robert H. Zieger

Detroit, Michigan, Dec. 1, 1984

Additional material, Gainesville, Florida, July 27, 2001
 
 
 

Edison's plans for his "batik recorder," c. 1883

James Furlong covered virtually every aspect of 19th century working-class life in his long career in journalism. Born in Wheeler, New York, in 1806, he grew up on his father's farm, the third of five children (3 brothers and 1 sister). His interview tells of his distaste for farm life and of his start in journalism. In 1824, he went to bourgeoning New York City to write for the New York Argus. He covered the vibrant working-class culture of the city, mixing with the dockers, cabbies, draymen, artisans, craftsmen, and day laborers. He was no stranger to the workers' saloons, music halls, reading societies, and lecture halls. He first came to national attention with his articles on the Working Men's Party and on the remarkable surge of political and trade union activism in the late 20s and early 30s. In 1836 and again in the 1840s, he covered the "turnouts" (strikes) of the female textile operatives of New England. He met his future wife, Eliza May Wheelock, a textile worker and school teacher, at a rally in Lowell, Mass. They were married in 1838 and eventually had 3 children, Horace, Samuel, and Marion.

Furlong's reports on the devastating depressions of the late 1830s and those of the 1850s awakened the nation to the misery and depravation in the booming cities. His articles on the navvies and itinerant workers who dug the great canals and built the pre-Civil War railroads took readers inside the harsh and lonely world of these largely-unsung heroes of American expansion. In 1851, he did a brilliant series on the nation's mechanics and metal workers, highlighting the roles of these highly skilled workers in building the country's machine tool and capital goods industry. His article "Craftsmen of the Iron Horse," an account of the working lives of locomotive builders, won the Greeley Prize in 1852.

In 1844, Furlong toured the South in circumstances poignantly recalled in his interview. His series of articles was suppressed by New York publishers, fearful of offending slave owners and southern commercial advertisers. They were eventually published, in 1858 amid the rising anti-slavery sentiment of the fifties, under the title The Trouble I've Seen and remain a classic of anti-slavery reportage.

During the Civil War, Furlong reported on the revival of trade union activity in the northern states. In 1864, he turned war correspondent, spending three months with Pennsylvania regiments comprised largely of coal miners. He covered their daring effort to dig a tunnel and to plant a mine beneath the Confederate entrenchments at Petersburg, Virginia. His articles, published after the bloody Battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864) had ended in Union disaster, exposed the bungling by the Union commanders and documented the heroism of the miners and of the ill-used black soldiers who paid the price for inept leadership. In 1865 he received the coveted Guttenberg Award for these reports.

James Furlong was no stranger to European developments. He covered the massive demonstrations of the British Chartists in the 1840s. He found himself in Paris in 1848 (on "vacation") when the barricades went up and the monarchy collapsed. And again, in 1871 (fortuitously on "vacation" once more), when he spent three weeks among the Communards, sharing their meals of rats and shoe leather and witnessing the government's savage repression of the Commune. His harrowing account of the ghastly mass executions that marked the end of this experiment in workers' control had to be smuggled out of the country. In the 1850s, Furlong had become acquainted with both Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels. His interviews with these giants of the emerging socialist movement, Conversations with the Future (1857), brought European radical and working-class ideologies to American audiences for the first time,

Despite his advancing years, Furlong continued to cover virtually every labor-oriented story through the seventies and into the eighties. He reported on the degradation of the South's impoverished agricultural workers, white and black, in the aftermath of slavery. He rode the rails with the unemployed and down-and-out in the horrendous depression of the 1870s. In 1877, as recalled in his interview, he found himself in the midst of the almost-revolutionary railroad strikes of that turbulent year. A year earlier, he had covered the trials and executions of the so-called Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania. His exclusive interviews with Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Peter J. McGuire, John Siney, and Ira Stewart, collected in his book The New Men of Power (1882), chronicles the emergence of a new post-war labor movement. Mr. Furlong was interviewed in Menlo Park (East Orange), NJ in January, 1885, en route to Chicago where he was going for a series of articles on the Windy City's vibrant labor and radical activism. Published in the spring of 1885, these articles uncannily foretold the mixture of working-class activism, radical agitation, and governmental repression that exploded at the notorious Haymarket Affair in May of the next year.

Bibliography: "James Furlong," Appleton's Biographical Cyclopedia; Elizabeth Brandeis, "James Furlong," Dictionary of American Biography; James Furlong (with Eliza May Wheelock-Furlong), My Life with Labor (1896); Paul Justus, Giants of American Journalism. Vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century (New York, 1974).
 
 

The date of the interview is January 7, 1885. The interviewer is Mary Lewis Boyd, a student at New Jersey Normal School hired by Mr. Edison for stenographic and clerical work,
 

MLB: Good morning, Mr. Furlong. Welcome to Menlo Park,

JF: Good morning, young lady. Quite a setup you have here. Never seen so many machines and wires and-contraptions.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, can you tell us how you first became a newspaper man?

JF: I was born on a farm in New York State. In those days, you were expected to help with the farm work as soon as you could walk and it was expected that you would become a farmer, eventually, just as your father was. Well, I was a sickly lad and never was much use around the place. My father was impatient with me, but my mother-God Bless her-protected me from his anger. When I showed an interest in reading, she encouraged me. We borrowed books from the minister-I can still remember reading Goodin's Exemplary Lives of the Saints, all 700 pages of it! I couldn't get enough reading, and I wrote little poems and stories too. When I was 13, my father laid down the law: either I get out and work on the farm, along with my brothers Seth and Enoch, or I find some other way to contribute to the family's income. Well, it happened that I had borrowed some books from the man who published the little county newspaper in the market town, about six miles from our farm. I went down there and begged him to put me to work in his office. From having hung around there while on my visits, I had picked up a little understanding of the printer's trade, and I was fascinated by the smell of the ink and the magic by which the cold type and paper was transformed into a newspaper. Mr. Crane, the publisher, was reluctant but after a while he agreed to take me on to run errands, fetch the coal for the stove, deliver newspapers, and in general be of use around the place. It wasn't till years later that I learned, from his son Ephraim, why he had hired me. It turned out that my mother called on him and promised to pay my wages from her egg money if Mr. Crane found that the work I was doing didn't justify the pittance I would receive. She was that determined to keep me out of the fields.

MLB: I understand how you began working on a newspaper, but how did you begin as a reporter?

JF: In those days, there wasn't so much of a difference between getting the news, reporting it, and printing it as there is now. The printer was a sort of educated man. He often had to compose articles as filler material. Everyone looked up to the printer because he read books, if only to find passages he could reprint to fill up blank space. So naturally, being of a bookish turn, I began to submit poems and little essays to Mr. Crane. At first he was pretty skeptical-what was this snot-nosed kid doing, pretending he was a writer? But once, when he was out of the office, I set up a little anecdote I had written in type and it was printed in the paper. Old man Crane was furious and was about to send me back to my mother. But just as he ordered me to gather up my belongings, who should come through the door but the minister, Rev. Heckle. "Well, John," he said, "I see that you've finally found somebody who knows how to write an entertainin' piece for this sorry excuse of a newspaper you're peddling." The good Reverend had come all the way across town to compliment Crane on my little article! Naturally, Crane couldn't let me go after that and, after punishing me with the silent treatment for a few days, he began to send me out to collect news. I went to the quilting bees, the church meetings, the store openings. Before you knew it, I was the ace reporter of the Deegan's Falls Eagle-Republican.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, [the recording is garbled here. In all, about sixteen minutes' worth is undecipherable. Smithsonian engineers are attempting to reconstruct this material by means of new techniques of sound depth imprint analysis, but for now it is lost to us].

JF: . . . in 1836, I think it was. Oh, my, how those mill girls paraded through the streets of Lowell! I never shall forget the sight. Marching shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of them. See, they had been hired to work in these cotton mills. At first, it was sort of like a sorority. They lived in boardinghouses, had chaperones, had concerts and lectures to attend. They were fresh from the farms, most of them. Well, being from a farm family I could see how they liked being on their own, liked having a few dollars to spend on clothes and books. Many of them worked for a year or two, saved up a few dollars, and then went to school to become schoolmarms. But the mill owners began to feel the pinch of competition. They cut wages. They speeded up the pace of work. The girls were outraged. This was no way to treat Yankee girls, independent Americans! They printed up a broadside (I helped them out with the typesetting), called a meeting, invited a fellow from Fall River up to give a talk, and voted to go on strike. A "turn out" they called it. Before you knew it, here they were-hundreds of the prettiest, most determined young ladies you've ever seen, all dressed up in their little bonnets and their Sunday dresses, marching through the streets, carrying banners and signs that said "We March as Our Fathers Fought-For Liberty" and "Fair Work, Fair Wages," and the like. My, my, that was a sight. And I'll tell you something, missy, from that moment on I never had any doubts about the strength and determination of womenfolk. They try to tell us that women are weak and flighty, that they shouldn't bother their little heads about serious matters, and so on. Don't you ever believe it. Those girls were a real inspiration.

MLB: So that was the first strike you witnessed. You must have seen many others.

JF: Indeed, I have. Printers, mechanics, coal diggers, carpenters, shoe workers-I've covered a lot of them. Some people think that these strikes are something bad, something disreputable. Seems to me, though, that they are sometimes the only protection that working people have. Why, we should be proud of having free labor and proud that people can band together to defend themselves.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, Mr, Edison and his associates would prefer it if you did not editorialize during this interview.

JF: Hrumpf.

MLB: What was the most dramatic and exciting strike you ever witnessed?

JF: That's easy-the big railroad strike in Pittsburgh in '77. Oh, I've seen a lot of them over the years. Never forget the shoeworkers up in Lynn back in '60, just before the war. Thousands of them, filling the streets, protesting the "stretch out," trying to get some control over their own lives. But the big railroad strikes-now, that was something. I had gone over to Pittsburgh to do a series on the new steel industry that was booming out there. I had heard stories of what life was like in the mill towns and what working conditions were like. I wanted to see it for myself. Most reporters were interested in this man Carnegie and how he came over to this country as a bobbin boy and worked his way up to practically owning the whole steel industry. I was interested in the way in which he and his managers were trying to get control over the whole process of iron and steel working. I had spent some time up in Troy, New York. Lived with the Irish iron workers there-puddlers, roughers, furnace men. Boy, those bogtrotters (don't take offense, missy, some of my best friends are Irishmen, b'gorra) controlled that town. Why, they elected their own people to all the city offices; they had a regular political machine. They had a strong union, reading and debating societies, social clubs. See, because they had such important skills in the iron mills they were able to stand up to the bosses, both in the plant and outside. Dontcha see-skill on the job translates to power in your neighborhood and community. But Pittsburgh and those other Pennsylvania towns-what a contrast! Carnegie and his managers were using the new Bessemer furnace and other changes in steel-making to reorganize the whole labor force. Sure, you still did have some highly skilled workers there, and a good union. But so many of them were unskilled. They worked a twelve hour day. Why every two weeks, they had to work a 24 hour shift just to get a whole day off. And those big mills were hot as blazes, hellish places (excuse the language). Why, I saw, with my own eyes, one fellow faint from the heat and another crushed by one of those big iron buckets that they use to dip out the molten metal. Friend of mine on the Pittsburgh Gazette tells me that there must be 200 killed in those mills each year. If the poor fellow's lucky, the company'll pay for his burial and give his wife $10. Hellish places, I say. 'Course, Carnegie does get the steel out. . . . tons and tons of it. One day, . . . .

MLB: Mr. Furlong, the railroad strike?

JF: Oh, yes. Sorry, I was explaining why I happened to be in Pittsburgh back in '77. Well, it was depression times. The railroads had been cutting wages, increasing the size of the trains. Strikes broke out, first down in Maryland. On July 19-my wife's birthday, so I remember the date-I went down from my boardinghouse to the train depot to send her a birthday telegram. I noticed right off something was going on-men, kids, working men in the streets. A lot of angry talking, soap box orators, meetings going on. I forgot the telegram (caught h--- for that when I got back home, you can bet) and fell in with the crowd. I say "crowd" advisedly. Some of the reporters who got there later called it a mob, but it didn't seem like a mob to me. No, sir-these folks knew exactly what they wanted to do. They were boiling mad over the way the Pennsylvania [Railroad] was treating them. The sheriff came down told them to vacate company property, but they wouldn't budge. Then we heard that the governor was sending in the militia, and sure enough, this seedy looking, ragtag "military" outfit soon appeared. But before long, some of the strikers-many of them had relatives and friends in the militia-began explaining things to these "soldiers." Lo and behold, a lot of them threw down their guns and slipped off. And some of them tore off their arm patches and threw down their military caps and joined up with the strikers.

Well, so far it was sort of fun, like a holiday. But word went out that a "gentlemen's" militia unit from Philadelphia was on its way. Now, these Philadelphia fellers were upper crust types. They weren't likely to get friendly with a batch of poor railroad workers. Well, they marched in, 600 of them I later learned, and over on 26th Street they halted, loaded their muskets, and fired into the crowd. I had ducked down behind a pile of barrels. Seemed like the firing went on and on, though I guess it was just a minute or so. When I peered out over the barrels I saw one of the most hideous sights I ever want to see. Dozens and dozens of people, some of them women and children, crumpled on the ground. Blood everywhere. Piteous screams and shrieks.

People scattered, but this massacre-and I mean massacre, for they killed 26 people-really infuriated the crowd. They charged the militia and forced them to take cover in the repair shops, the roundhouse. Then they set fire to it. The militia boys slunk out of town the next day while the workers set about to burn and destroy as much railroad property as they could. Caused over $5,000,000 worth of property damage, I was told. The authorities and papers called them a mob, and I suppose, since by now there were thousands of people and many of them were not railroad workers, maybe they were a mob. But for my money (and you can tell Mr. Edison this isn't any editorial, but the God's truth) it was the militia, in shooting people in cold blood, that acted like savages. The "mob" so-called just burned and broke up some property.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, perhaps we had better stop for lunch.

JF: Right you are, missy. Hope I didn't upset you with my war stories.

MLB: Not at all. Shall we begin again at 2:00?
 
 

The bracketed material below has been recovered since the original discovery of the Furlong "tapes" and is published here for the first time.

[MLB: Mr. Furlong, a person might get the impression from our conversation thus far that workers were always going on strike, struggling to resist the economic and industrial changes that were taking place. In your experience, is this an accurate "reading" of workers' responses to the rise of industry?

[JF: I see whatcha mean, missy. And it is true that most of the time most people just tried to get on with it, to make do, feed their families, and so forth. And it's also true that the new way of doing things improved the lives of a lot of people. Women, for example: people can idealize farm life all they want but for the womenfolk farming meant endless labor, and heavy labor at that. And it's also true that a lot of the men working on the railroads and in the new workshops and factories were proud of their work and saw it as a way to get ahead in the world. You may know that there was a big religious revival back before the Civil War. Many of the mill workers I knew, for example, believed that strikes and agitation were the Devil's work. Others, though, thought of Jesus as the "Carpenter of Nazareth" who was a friend and ally of the worker struggling to defend his rights. Still others took to the temperance movement and advised fellow workers to take the pledge and forget labor agitation. No, I'd say that for every worker who went out on strike, there were two or three who opposed all the ruckus; and for every so-called agitator who tried to whip up anger at the employer there was a worker-preacher or temperance society man who preached patience and obedience.]

MLB: Mr. Furlong, you spent some time in the South before the War Between the States, didn't you? Can you tell our listeners your impressions?

JF: Back in '44, my sister Rose married a southern man by the name of Rhett Calhoun III. He was up in New York on business and met my sister at a social put on by the church. Seemed like an awful nice feller-courtly, generous, liberal-minded. Since Rose was almost 30 at the time, we were delighted that she had finally made a match, and to such a fine fellow as Rhett Calhoun. After the wedding, they went back to South Carolina where he owned a rice plantation. At first Rose's letters were enthusiastic. She went on and on about the warm weather, the sandy beaches, the gracious living. But before long, her letters became sad, like she was homesick. And troubled. Well, I had never been South, so I arranged with Mr. Greeley-Horace Greeley, dontcha know, who owned the New York Tribune-to go down and do some articles on "The South Today," or some such title.

Well, no sooner had I arrived at "Freehaven"-that was what the Calhoun plantation was called-than Rose opened her heart to me. She had known, of course, that the Calhouns used slave labor. Everybody knew that. But the reality was worse than she had ever imagined. She had thought that she might be able to persuade her Rhett to free his slaves-foolishness, she quickly concluded, because the family's whole livelihood rested on slavery. At least, she felt, perhaps she could minister to the poor creatures, read them the Bible, tend their illnesses. Nothing doing-the slaves hated and resented the whites, no matter how well intentioned or kindly they might be. Besides, she found, they were proud people, people who had their own preachers and their own nurses. Worst of all, she confided, was the brutality of the system. Hardly a week went by that a slave was not whipped-for doing bad work, for insolence, for running away. She pleaded with her husband to stop the whippings, but this fellow who seemed so kindly and generous in New York only told her to stay out of men's affairs; whipping was necessary, he said, or else the slaves would get out of line. Production would fall and he would have to sell off all the pretty things-the jewelry, the tuille dresses, the fine pony-he had given her as wedding presents.

One day, she came upon a scene that plunged her into despair. There was her beloved Rhett dickering with a fellow she recognized as a slave merchant. Rhett was selling Caesar, one of his prime field hands, because he needed cash for some land purchases. And there was Caesar's wife, Jane, and her two little ones, begging Calhoun not to sell their husband and father-or at least to include them in the sale. Jane begged and pleaded, but Rhett was adamant. Finally, Rose told me, she saw him draw back his riding crop and hit her to drive Jane away. Rose, who had witnessed this unobserved, ran sobbing back to the house and hid for the rest of the day in the root cellar.

MLB: What-what happened to her?

JF: Rose just shriveled up. In those days, a woman couldn't leave a marriage. Besides, a child was on the way. For the next twenty years, she hardly left her room, except to tend the child. She insisted on sending him North for his education. When Calhoun died-died from wounds suffered at Petersburg in '64-Rose packed up and went back to New York.

MLB: That's an incredible story.

JF: Well, after she told me about it, I investigated the "peculiar institution" of the South. Spent the next six weeks on my horse, going from plantation to plantation. Talked with the owners, of course, and learned a lot about conditions in the South. How afraid they were of insurrection, despite their constant assertion that the slaves were happy. How they had to resort to the lash to maintain discipline. Then I'd sneak down to the slave quarters and try to get some of the bondsmen to talk to me. Most wouldn't; didn't trust any white man, and I couldn't blame them. But I kept my ears and eyes opened and I learned a lot about that part of southern life. How the slaves resented their masters' power over them. How the men hated the dalliances their wives and daughters were subjected to by the master and his sons. There were stories of successful escapes and stories of slaves ganging up on hated overseers in a remote corner of the field. I came away with this thought: I was surprised at what skillful workers so many slaves were-on the big plantations you had coopers and shoemakers and blacksmiths; herdsmen and carpenters; and of course agricultural workers. What a resourceful and courageous people, I thought (and wrote about in my series, which Greeley, though he was opposed to slavery, would not print); what a tragedy this system of slavery is for white and black.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, why don't we break off here and resume tomorrow?

JF: Right you are, young lady. Bright and early?

January 8, 1885

MLB: Good morning, Mr. Furlong, I trust you are enjoying your stay in East Orange.

JF: Always liked New Jersey, young lady. Used to come down to attend the parades they used to have over in Newark. My, when the various organizations of tradesmen came marching down the street-saddle makers, cordwainers, mechanics, carpenters, jewelers. Quite a sight, with their fancy banners: "Morocco Leather Makers Society of Newark-Free Men All." Why once . . . .

MLB: Mr. Furlong, our supply of fabric is dwindling. Mr. Edison wanted me to ask you about your experiences with the trades unions and the men who run them I know that you have interviewed many of these men.

JF: Correction, missy-men and women. ' Tis true that the public hears most about fellers like [Terrence] Powderly, [John] Siney, [Jonathan] Fincher, [John] Sovereign, [Ira] Stewart, and the like. But there's some awful feisty womenfolk out there too. Just think of Elizabeth Morgan, over in Chicago. Her husband Tommy got all the credit, but Elizabeth joined the Sovereigns of Industry back in '74, raised her family, and helped sustain the whole trade union movement out there. And Lizzie Swank and Alzinia Stevens, setting up the Working Women's Union back in '80. A lot of these gals are real strong in the Knights of Labor. Some are organizers. Never forget going to one of the Knights' conventions a couple of years back. All these somber looking fellows, all dressed up to look respectable-handlebar mustaches, as the fashion was. And then Alzinia, lugging her baby on her hip, right in there speaking up for the women. I'll say this for Powderly and the Knights-they got some funny ideas but they understand that women work too and need to have organization, just like men.

Funny thing about these labor men-speaking of people like Siney of the Miners, Sovereign of the iron workers, Powderly. People think they're wild-eyed radicals of some sort. Blood thirsty "anarchists" and "communists." Hah! I've seen some radicals, let me tell you. Spent three weeks in the spring of '71 with the Communards in Paree-supposed to be taking a vacation, I was. Those fellows (and women) wanted to overturn the whole arrangement. Thousands of them "executed" (more like murdered) by the government troops. Now, those were radicals. Fellows like Powderly and Fincher and Siney-why they're just plain old American republicans. They see what's happening to working people. A few men get rich while thousands are stuck in poverty. The bosses destroy the traditional skills-"division of labor" it's called. Gets so a freeborn American worker has to come crawling to some magnate for a job, to earn enough to feed his family. Powderly and some of his people in the Knights of Labor want to have workers set up their own industries, "cooperatives" they are called. Well, I'm doubtful. I've seen how these big companies operate. Not much chance for the little man any more. Still, in some places-Vermont and Missouri, for example-the Knights are setting up worker-run industries. And they've organized whole towns and even some small cities-social clubs, electing their own people to office, controlling the police. But it's not some sort of crazy "socialism" they're after. Just want a worker to be able to stand on his feet and be treated like the freeborn American he is.

MLB: Who are the most interesting labor leaders you've come across?

JF: Good question. Let me mention a couple of fellows you may not have heard of. Fellow down in Ohio and West Virginia, a miner, named Davis. Richard Davis. Black fellow. Out there trying to convince the miners that they ought to stick together, regardless of color. You'd think, with all the anti-Negro feeling around these days, he'd have a hopeless time of it. But no sir-he's smart and very convincing. Been able to organize some good little unions down there, black and white together. I don't say that bringing blacks and whites together can really work, but I'm impressed with what Richard Davis is doing.

Another fellow I ran into over in Terre Haute, Indiana. Local secretary of the railroad workers there-Locomotive Firemen, if I recall. Fellow named Debs-Eugene Victor Debs, named (so he told me) by his father after Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo, the French writers. Well, you might think he's sort of obscure, and God knows that the railroad unions are a pretty cautious lot. Still, there was something about this fellow-a certain earnestness and eloquence-that sets him apart. Fellows like this Debs believe that workers should have dignity, that they should be able to be free men in a free society. So when their employers treat them like part of the machines they operate, they get their dander up. A fellow like Debs knows a lot more about Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln than he does about Karl Marx (did I tell you I attended his funeral two years ago-knew him from the `50s when I used to go over to London for Greeley to talk to him about the articles him and his sidekick, Engels, used to write for the Trib. You could tell he was a brilliant man. Fierce eyes, bushy whiskers. Had a good translator to help me out but I never could understand what he was talking about when he got off on some guy named Hegel and the "dialectic" and stuff like that. But his newspaper articles-though I think that Engels wrote most of his stuff-the newspaper articles were awful good. I may not know much about what they call "metaphysics," but I know a good reporter when I see one). Where was I? Oh, yes-fellow like Debs doesn't know much about Marx, but he doesn't have to. Jefferson, Lincoln, and his own experiences are likely to make him "radical"-but an American radical.

MLB: Mr. Furlong, we're almost out of fabric, Can you tell me quickly the most important changes you've seen in the lives of working people over the past 70 years?

JF: Yep. I'll just list them for you: 1) The shift from agriculture to industry, and now to large-scale industry. Why back in '60, the average "industrial" workshop had about 6-7 employees; now it's up to 30, and if you ever see the men streaming out of these big plants-the McCormick Harvester works in Chicago, for example-you're seeing the wave of the future, mark my words. 2) The end of slavery. If we play our cards right, these Africans will contribute an enormous amount to this country now that that evil system is dead. 'Course, the odds are against playing our cards right, I'll admit. One way or the other, though, these black folks will be heard from. 3) All this immigration. Back in the '40s and '50s it was the Irish and the Germans. Then the Swedes and Norwegians. Now the Eye-talians, Poles, Russians, Jews. The more the merrier, I say, though just recently they have stopped the Chinese. Some foolishness about the "Yellow Peril." Some gratitude after what those Chinese did in building the railroads and opening up the mines out West. Humpf. Anyway, 4) These trades unions are really developing. Oh, they go back a long way. Why, I remember the way they sprang up in New York City back in the '20s and '30s. Heard Frances Wright at the Mechanics' hall. What a vision she was! Dressed in white muslin, attended by a bevy of women assistants-I'll never forget that when she stood before the audience to speak, she took off her bonnet with one hand, as a man would, not with both, as a woman would. Well, Frances Wright was not a labor leader, I guess, but my point is that the trades-the ship caulkers, carpenters, silversmiths, construction workers, and the like had good organizations back then. Most of the unions up to now, with some exceptions of course, weren't intended to be permanent. A lot of the people in the trades had the idea that they could stop the cheapening of their skills and keep open the possibility of becoming independent masters themselves. So often the old unions were temporary bodies, or mixed bodies of independent masters and journeymen. But the Printers and the Iron Workers realized pretty early that their status was permanent and that they had better link up all their locals into a national union. More and more working people understand this now. I wouldn't be surprised to see a permanent federation of these unions. Fellow named McGuire, a carpenter, and another man named Gompers-immigrant London Jew, cigarmaker-are working to bring this about. You can. . . .

MLB : Mr. Furlong, we have just a minute or so. What are your predictions for the future of American workers?

JF: Oh, big things are coming, I predict . . . . [The recording ends here.]

1. Professor Zieger is now on the faculty of the University of Florida.